Clicking on it, with Acrobat Reader, works fine for Firefox and IE but it doesn't for Google Chrome.

In the address bar/line in Google Chrome appears lyle.smu.edu/%257Etspell/jaws instead.

The url is shown correctly if I copy and paste it from Acrobat Reader manually into Google Chrome’s address line, but it doesn't open. It only opens in Google Chrome if I type it directly in the address line.

I've chosen to open Google Chrome as my predetermined navigator, when asked by the navigator.

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By clicking the default browser will be opened. Just for clarification: Did you change the default browser to G. Chrome, and if yes, how? What is shown in the address bar/line or whatever it is called in G. Chrome? What happens if you copy the url and paste it manually into Chrome’s address line? (And as I already said: Don’t be astonished, if this would be closed as off-topic).
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SperavirJan 15 '13 at 2:45

Hmm, usually the tilde is “0x7e”, what would be %7E then, but I do not know, where the “25” comes from.
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SperavirJan 15 '13 at 3:40

The tilde ~ is an unreserved character (RFC 3986) and do not need percent encoding.
Thus the second and third URLs are just for testing.

The URLs work (opening firefox with the correct URL) for the following PDF viewers:

xpdf 3.00

AR5/Linux

AR7/Linux

AR8/Linux

Foxit Reader 5.4

PDF XChange Viewer 2.5

evince 2.32

Google Chrome 24 (internal PDF viewer)

However, AR11/Win seems to convert the tilde to percent encoding %7E and to apply the percent encoding again, resulting in the wrong %257E. Therefore it looks like a bug in AR11/Win. Since also the percent encoded URL does not work, I do not know a workaround except using a service like tinyurl to avoid ~ (or other problematic characters).